Hike strikes a smart partnership with Airtel to offer ‘Total, built by hike’ on all devices

Hike, the first out and out Indian cross-platform instant messaging app for smartphones announced its collaboration with Bharti Airtel (the Delhi-based Indian global telecommunications services company) in New Delhi today to affix ‘Total, built by hike’ on mobiles under Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ drive.

From March 2018 onwards, some smartphones under the ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ will be shipped with Total as an inbuilt feature. This comes up as a good news for the users as the combination of ‘Total’ and ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ will open up access to major services like Messaging, Recharge, news updates and so on even without the need of a data connection, and the additional benefit of subscription offer to internet packs for a nominal rate as Re 1.

So, strategic partnership results in ‘Total, built by hike’, an improvised and reconfigured Android version having 4 key elements that add up mutually to make the end to end user experience very smooth, simple and hassle-free.

Now, zeroing on the 4 elements, they are namely:

Single Login

As the name suggests, this element allows a single login via the phone number of the user subscribed to each and every Total service such as Messaging, Horoscope, Recharge, News, Cricket scores, Wallet, and Rail information.

Light Services ( 100 kb to 1 MB)

They indicate those ‘Total, built by hike’ Services that are between < 100 kb to 1 MB enabling a lightweight footprint on the phone device.

Works without Data

This advanced element allows all the services built on Total to be accessed even when one does not have an active data connection, through appropriate proprietary technology.

Sachet Data Packs

The user base of Hike will soon be able to buy Sachet Data Packs starting as low as Re. 1 as offered within the Total experience itself. This smart marketing move is spelled out with the goal of cutting down the cost of access so as to increase the volume of users’ accessibility to a data connection.

“With ‘Total’ on ‘Mera Pehla Smartphones’, first-time users will find it easy understand and navigate a smartphone. Using data is also simplified and ‘Total’ users can get online with special data packs starting as low as Re 1/-. This is really powerful. We are very clear that to get a billion people online, we need to make the whole process of coming online a lot simpler, less intimidating as well as cost-effective and this partnership with Airtel is likely to do that”, stated the Founder and CEO of Hike, Kavin Bharti Mittal.

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Nikhil Gilani, Head, Devices & eCommerce, Bharti Airtel issued his statement which goes: “Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ has been a pathbreaking initiative towards removing barriers to smartphone adoption in India and has received a very positive response from customers. We share Hike’s vision of helping every Indian own a smartphone and benefit from the digital super-highway. We look forward to collaborating with all our partners under this initiative to give every Indian access to a smartphone, bring them online and be a part of Digital India.”

Now, Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ drive, which was launched back in October 2017 had its mission to facilitate and draw every Indian towards getting themselves a 4G smartphone. In favor of its aim, Airtel struck partnerships with quite many mobile handset manufacturers so as to usher into an ‘open ecosystem’ of reasonably priced 4G smartphones in order to arrive at budget-friendly prices in the global market scenario.

If some published reports are to be believed, over 700 million people are expected to own smartphones by 2020, with many of them getting the hang of smartphones for the very first time. Therefore, for the first time users, it is likely that a smartphone experience could be quite complex and confusing. However, with this forward-looking partnership drive by Hike, these newbie users can conveniently override the 15-20 step long process that is to be undergone to be online, and cut it short to only a few steps to be followed for the same. Consequently, the users can thoroughly enjoy their smartphone experience with its array of versatile services, attracting more and more people to ‘Hike up’ their lives.

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